Sikh Slayings: White Anxiety Gone Extreme

America's browning drives a backlash that found its most virulent strain in Wade Michael Page.

(The Root) -- When Wade Michael Page walked into a Wisconsin temple last wesek, murdering six Sikh worshippers and critically wounding three others, it was an incident waiting to happen.

As the neo-Nazi loser marched through the temple randomly shooting one Sikh after the next, perhaps the "14 words" motto of white supremacists was running through his warped mind: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

To the insecure and frightened haters in our nation, the end of white dominance in America is increasingly inevitable. Besides being red, white and blue, the good old US of A is steadily becoming brown, black and yellow -- a majority-minority nation.

During a 12-month period that ended July 2011, for the first time in America's modern history, more minority babies were born than white babies. Casually referred to by white supremacists as members of "the mud races," Hispanic, black and Asian newborns made up 50.4 percent of the nation's births during that period. Just 22 years ago, minority births accounted for a much lower figure -- 37 percent.

"White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the Census Bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitored Wade Michael Page in particular for the past 12 years, and hate groups in general for much longer than that. "The demographic change in this country is the single-most-important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years," he told ABC News.

Last year Potok's organization reported that hate groups in America had exploded to more than 1,000 from 602 at the beginning of the millennium.

Domestic terrorist Page, a 40-year-old U.S. Army reject, who died from a self-inflicted wound during the Oak Creek massacre, could take credit for some of that growth. For more than a decade, Page had been playing hate music. He played with white-power heavy-metal bands affiliated with Hammerskins Nation, and he led a couple of bands of his own, Definite Hate and End Apathy. His music appealed to other young white losers, creating new haters every day. It also raised money to help bankroll other hate groups like the National Alliance, the violent hate group that inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up a Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, which also monitors America's white supremacy groups, the names of these racists bands reveal what's on their minds and in their hearts, names like Grinded Nig, Jew Slaughter and Aggravated Assault. "In keeping with its attempts to reach out to young people, one label, named Resistance Records, even markets a white supremacist video game, 'Ethnic Cleansing,' " the ADL reports on its website. "The game is a first-person-shooter in which the player takes on the role of a white warrior in a future 'Race War,' who must kill all nonwhites to ensure 'the survival of your kind.' "

Although these virulent, malicious white supremacists, who wear their hate on their tattoo sleeves and everywhere else, are more or less a limited group of bigots, they may merely be the underbelly of a larger phenomenon.

When the Tea Party and other conservatives cry, "We want our country back," it doesn't take much imagination to translate what that means as the nation's demographics and culture continue their colorful shift.

Mainstream conservatives have been spewing coded, dog-whistle racist messages since Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen" speech in 1976 and the Willie Horton ad employed in the George H.W. Bush 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis. More recently, the billionaire Koch brothers and their right-wing organization, Americans for Prosperity, were accused of buying a North Carolina school board in an effort to resegregate the Wake County school system.

So I wasn't exactly shocked when conservatives attacked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano when she issued a report in April 2009 warning that right-wing extremists threaten American security. The nine-page report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," documented the smoldering hate among the nation's extreme right-wing groups, warning that some individuals might commit violent acts. "If such violence were to occur," the report said, "it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets."

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin posted a blog with this headline: "Confirmed: The Obama DHS Hit Job on Conservatives Is Real."

I would like to attribute all this hate to good old-fashioned American exceptionalism, but I would be wrong.

A year ago, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik went on a shooting and bombing spree that left 77 people dead, many of them teenagers, almost all of them Muslims. Like his brethren in the U.S., he hated Muslims, he hated people who didn't look like him and he hated cultural diversity.

I fear this is just the beginning. Not only are some white Americans threatened by the encroaching "mud races," but there is a quickening recognition around the planet that the world is yellow, brown and black.

Cyber columnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed-page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show. He was also the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him on Twitter.

August 02, 2012

I’d heard about Chick-Fil-A long before I tasted it. It was being touted by a few of my friends as so good it would make you want to slap your momma. Last year, while driving out east, my wife, Joyce Owens, and I stopped at one of its franchises and much to my surprise, I discovered Chick-Fil-A tasted like, well, it tasted like....chicken. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t special either. Harold’s Chicken Shack on the South Side or Marcello’s chicken on the North Side both serve a tastier bird. So when I noticed that a Chick-Fil-A had opened a couple of blocks off the Mag Mile, I made no beeline to grab a bite. And, when there was a call to boycott the fast food chicken chain because its CEO, Dan Cathy, exposed himself as being anti-gay, it was as easy for me to ignore as to not vote for Mitt Romney. But when Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Joe Moreno started making noises about cancelling Chick-Fil-A’s order for a second restaurant in Chicago, my interest was piqued. The two Chicago pols took it beyond the boycott to the political stage. Should a restaurant be barred from doing business in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood because Cathy--who takes prides himself in being a good Christian and family man--is a bigot? There would be no easy answer if Cathy’s bigotry was just a matter of religious belief. But this man puts his money where his mouth is. In 2010, the fast food chain donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay groups. The bottom line: Cathy’s nearly 2,000 restaurant chain is funding bias against gays. And while there is no proof that any Chick-Fil-A has refused to take money from homosexuals, the contributions speak volumes in and of themselves.

All you have to do is look at it a little differently.

Instead of Chick-Fil-A CEO being a family man and a Christian, let’s imagine that he was a family man and a Muslim. As a good Muslim, let’s say he bragged about being anti-Israel, rather than anti-gay. Let’s think of what the reaction would be when it was discovered that he contributed money to anti-Israeli groups. Not terrorists groups but pro-Palistinian groups.

I wonder how important it’d be that Chick-Fil-A had no record of discriminating against Jews. And I wonder if the same people who flocked into the Chick-Fil-A Appreciate Day would be lining up to show their support and contributing to record sales.

There’s that old axiom about not discussing religion or politics at the dinner table. Dan Cathy might want to make it his food for thought.

January 02, 2010

It's that time of the year again. January 2, the day I resolve to do things I haven't done or to stop doing things I do. Lately, each year has begun with the same resolutions: I'm going to exercise more, lose a few pounds, get my house in order, read and write more and watch TV less.

Each year starts out with a bang and ends with a whimper. That's why I get to make the same old resolutions again come the next January 2. Last year, I recorded the days I exercised in a pocket calendar. My aerobic exercising and iron pumping was a regular routine until May Day. Except for a few outings on my bicycle there are a lot of blank papers in my calendar after May 1. I fell way off the wagon. Again.

But although this day could easily be declared my annual day for future failure, I celebrate it as my great day of the big past success.

In 1975, exactly 35 years ago to the day, I quit smoking cigarettes.

It was no easy feat. I went cold turkey. I went through a nasty withdrawal. I fought off capricious cravings for years. I know that I am healthier and wealthier for my suffering. Definitely wealthier. When I quit my pack and a half to three packs a day habit, cigarettes were 55 cents a pack. You could pick up a carton for about eight bucks. A smoker today, thanks mostly to sin taxes, pays more than that for one pack. Had I kept my old bad habit, I would have been burning up between $4,380 to $8,760 a year. That's two top-shelf 55-inch flat screen plasma TVs a year. Or an annual cruise to Tahiti for two. Or three months' worth of dining out at five-star restaurants.

That's a whole lot of dough that didn't go up in smoke...for one year. Multiple that by 35 and we're talking real money. So, whatever New Year's resolution I make today and break tomorrow, not smoking makes up for it. Still, I'd like to succeed at something else. This will be my year. Last year, I all but quit posting on my blog about halfway through. It wasn't my intention but when you've been paid to write for all of your professional life, doing it for nothing is no easy task. Beyond that, the Wingnuts took their toll. The antics of the Deathers, the Birthers, the Tea-baggers, the Cheneys and their ilk left me dumbfounded and speechless.

So on this day, I resolve to get down to my fighting weight and get back into the fray. This is my first post of the year. Many more will follow. The dumbbells are calling me out.

September 11, 2009

Watching today's commemorations of the eight anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, I am reminded of how badly the Bush Administration blew it. The most incompetent presidency in our nation's history presided over the worst failure in national security since Pearl Harbor.

Keeping this in mind, I shake my head, then my fist, whenever Dick Cheney or his darling daughter show up on some TV news talk show bragging about how the Bush Administration's criminal torture practices kept us safe. This isn't just another exercise in tortured logic, it's a sputtering lurch of the right wing old fear trying to journey just a bit further on a road well traveled. The Cheneys, in presenting their mythology about keep us safe since 9/11 have never gotten around to telling us who kept us safe from February 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first bombed, until September 11, 2001, when the Towers were tragically toppled.

That stretch of safety, by my count, was one days short of eight years, six months and two weeks. We're not there yet.

I'm also reminded on this day that the Bush Administration failed to pull off the president's bullhorn braggadocio: "And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Well, either Osama bin Laden was deaf or President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney substituted the bullhorn for the dog whistle. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks never heard from the Bush Administration. Now it's President Obama's turn. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. He wants to shift our misguided war efforts from Iraq back to where they should have been concentrated all along.

I'm afraid it's too little, too late. The Bushies had a chance to make a surgical strike right after 9/11. They let the cancer metastasize. They created more terrorists and gave bin Laden and his henchman a chance to slip into Pakistan. The Obama Administration has inherited a bad situation that can only get worse. Sending more of our young men and women into the land where Empires go to die is a losing proposition.

I'm having trouble writing this, but I agree with George Will: We need to bring the troops home. President Obama should adapt the common sense sensitivities of State Senator Obama and apply them to Afghanistan. Should the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan and should al Qaeda crawl out of the caves in Pakistan, we've can always hit them again.

November 19, 2008

A little more than a year ago, I went to The Second City Theatre to enjoy its side-splitting hit revue at the time, "Between Barack and a Hard Place." The famed improv comedy ensemble, which is the comedic mother of Saturday Night Live, had put together a show that was all about Barack Obama, his candidacy and his political appeal.I was reminded of the series of satirical skits today when Al Qaida's mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released an audiotape calling our President-elect a House Negro."You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," observed bin Laden's sidekick in the recording.Has The Second City gone international with its satire? Is Al Qaida giving up on being a bunch of murderous religious zealots for stand-up comedy? What is going on here? And, where the hell is Osama bin Laden? Is he dead or simply too chicken to play straight man his deputy-villain's new routine?

As it turns out, Obama's historic election as the first black leader of the free world has haters all over the planet in a bind. Right after the election, Thomas Robb, a grand poo-pa-pa in the Ku Klux Klan attributed Obama's success to his being only half black. Apparently Obama's Kansas mother's white, superior blood contributed to all the positive qualities that got him where he is going.And before our homegrown, historical terrorist group could finish explaining this inexplicable phenomenon, that terrorist group abroad figured it had some 'plaining to do as well.If America was as evil, racist and anti-Muslim as Al Qaida would have its followers believe, then what was the rationale behind Barack HUSSEIN Obama's popular, un-Saddam-like landslide election victory? Hmmm. Maybe the K.K.K. was on to something, sort of.The Al-Qaida tape definitely had a racial edge to it. Obama isn't a black man or anything the world's majority population--colored people--should relate to. He's a tool of the white man. The House Negro that Brother Malcolm tongue-lashed. Al-Zawahiri's audiotape features snippets from Malcolm X's 1965 speech in Selma, Alabama where he compared the "house negro," who Uncle Tommed for favors from the slave master to the "field negro," who picked cotton and would rather see the plantation owner dead. Malcolm X, the spokesman for the Nation of Islam who later became a convert to a more orthodox Muslim faith. Federal surveillance of both Al Qaida and the K.K.K. made it too difficult for note comparison so the Muslim haters left out the white mother part that the Christian haters promoted so prominently.Apparently, hiding in the cave lands of Pakistan is not the best place to keep abreast of current events or the latest trends in humanity. If bin Laden is still alive, then al-Zawahiri might want to slip him into Chicago to check out Second City's latest show so the two terrorists, like their counterparts in America the Klan and the neo-Nazis, can work on updating their hateful passions and pronouncements. Their work is cut out for them. Two weeks before the November 4 election, an Al Qaida website backed John McCain, not understanding that America was in the process of changing.The Second City, on the other hand, was right on it. The comedy theatre's current hit revue is "No Country for Old White Men." I don't hear the haters laughing.

October 27, 2008

You wouldn’t think that being a terrorist in America would have much commercial appeal. The very thought of one—whether he’s hiding in the badlands of Pakistan, just a rocket launch from the Afghanistan border, or is a well-respected educator who did bad, bad things four decades ago—is enough for any true, blue American to want to spill a little blood. So why would Amazon.com expect to get $49.95 for a terrorist Halloween mask? That price is more than the change we need. Could it be because, in this case, the “terrorist” was none other than the man poised to win the U.S. presidential election by a landslide? You betcha, my friends. If you were willing to shell out more than half a C note, after shipping and handling, you could have bought a terrorist mask that has an uncanny likeness to Barack Obama—the guy McPalin and their hateful hordes have been mislabeling for the past few weeks.

We don’t know if this is more wingnut subterfuge or an honest mistake, but the folks at Amazon.com have since removed the classification, thanks to the L.A. Times blog, Top of the Ticket. (Hat tip to the Black Political Thought blog.)

Amazon.com listing had Barack Obama Halloween mask under 'terrorist'

You know that argument the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign has been relentlessly making that Barack Obama "pals" around with terrorists such as '60s ex-radical William Ayers?

And they say this reflects on his poor judgment because of other associates such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and newly-convicted Tony Rezko?

And worried Obama PR folks jump right on the e-mail whenever Obama and Ayers and the word "friend" appear together anywhere, even though Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Obama chief strategist David Axelrod have called them friends or friendly.

Anyway, a listing on Amazon.com, one of the largest and most successful online merchandisers in the world, seemed to come down even beyond the Republicans' side -- for a while anyway. With Halloween just days away, they're making a bundle off a $49.95 Barack Obama mask.Which was displayed on the "terrorist costume" page.

September 12, 2008

Watching The Interview with Charlie Gibson, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for women, Republicans and John McCain. This was the Trophy Veep exposed. It was the Beauty Queen Interview II, but this time instead of Miss Teen South Carolina, it was way up north with the runner-up in the Alaskan beauty pageant, Miss Congeniality.

It was not a pretty sight.
Sarah Palin didn’t know WTF she was talking about—and when she did, or did not, she lied about it. She didn’t know how NATO works. She didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. She continued to spiel an alternate reality about the Bridge to Nowhere by doing some explaining that was reminiscent of Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin.
The big diff, obviously, is that Caitlin, the adolescent, was competing for an insignificant position that would do no harm. Palin, a woman who should know better, is attempting to be vice president of the United States of America; the number two person to a 72-year-old man with a history of skin cancer. This time next year, under a worse case scenario, she could be the leader of the free world.How uninformed is she? Let me begin to count the ways.
Her foreign policy experience can be summed up very quickly: On a clear day, she can see Russia from Alaska.
Her reformer credentials can also be summarized just as easily: She may have kept The Bridge to Nowhere pork and abused earmarks in Alaska but when she goes to Washington, she’ll make sure such deals have transparency.
Her maverick instincts boil down to this: when she and McCain get to Washington, the beltway boys had better watch out.
Imagine what the right-wing fear and smear machine would be spewing out had Barack Obama spit out such inane answers to Gibson’s questions. Like I said, I feel embarrassed for women because this is only the second time in 20 years that they have one of their own on a major presidential ticket—and this one comes up blushingly short.

I am embarrassed for Republicans and McCain as well.
Do they really believe the American public is so stupid that they’ll buy this pig in a poke—lipstick not withstanding?

September 11, 2008

On the seventh anniversary of 911, the right continues to put forth the
argument that President Bush's invasion of Iraq, suppression of the U.S. Constitution and torturing of suspected terrorists have all contributed to our not being attacked since. Maybe. Maybe not.

Islamic extremists bombed New York's World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, then again, of course, on September 11, 2001. That was slightly less than eight and a half years from one attack to the other. And that had nothing to do with any national, coordinated effort to make sure that the Towers--and America overall was safe.

So, the argument that the Bush administration has kept us safe for the past seven years doesn't hold water--especially when you consider how incompetent it's been on the economy, the capture of Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina and a list of other crisis too long and too depressing to revisit.

Not long after the 911 national tragedy, Bush, Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans car-jacked it and have been claiming it's all theirs to make sure it never happens again. You saw their self-styled, self-serving manipulation of it during the 2004 elections via the Politics of Fear. You saw it again at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. You've already been given a sneak preview of what's to come in the early stages of John McCain's "Country First" campaign.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, on his show, Countdown, served up a powerful commentary last night. It runs 8:15. It's worth every second.

September 05, 2008

Bill O'Reilly is not smart enough, sincere enough or informed enough to handle Barack Obama. But his out-sized ego wouldn't let him realize that, so he stalked Obama and whined and whined until he finally got his way. The Democratic party nominee for president met with Fox News executives and agreed to sit down with Billo. This is part one of the interview. According to wing-nut O'Reilly, there will be more on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and it's supposed to be more exciting.

May 22, 2008

I watched the TV coverage of the Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky primary races with a combination of frustration and fury. For reasons that are beyond me, politicians and pundits alike are holding Barack Obama responsible for his lack of appeal to the so-called lunch bucket Democrats. Apparently, since Obama has been waging a non-racial campaign, it’s his fault that white folks whose parents were racist and who had grandparents with parents who were racists—going all the way back to the glory days of slavery—can't quite manage to cast a ballot for a black man who is running for president.I’ve written about it but reading the Rude Pundit’s post yesterday, Nigger Haters for Clinton, I realized I hadn't said it plain enough. Here’s some of what he had to say:

You ever been to the mythical "rural communities" of Appalachia? The Rude Pundit has, hanging out with mule farm owners and miners and others. And they are xenophobic, suspicious, and poor - hell, these redneck fuckers hate white outsiders. Just about every Deliverance-style, Hatfield and McCoy, Ma and Pa Kettle inbred backwards ass country fuck stereotype you ever imagined exists there, complete with their trashed front yards and about a mouth of teeth for every three or four households. And they have every right to hate people who have ripped away the jobs and kept them in deep poverty and ignorance. There's been so many promises broken to the people of Appalachia that they may as well be Indians. Hell, the last time anyone in the federal government gave a happy rat fuck about the region was in the LBJ administration.

When you talk about how Democratic they are, you are talking about the post-Civil War Democrats, when the party fostered and relied on racism and division in order to maintain power. You're talking Dixiecrats and Reagan Democrats. "Rural whites" in places like Kentucky and West Virginia wear their racism as a badge of honor. Because it's the perpetual ignorance of racism that keeps them from rising up against the whites who are actually keeping them racist, ignorant and poor.

So, is any thinking person really surprised when the Roswell Beacon runs a story about how white supremacist groups are so flummoxed by Obama’s successful campaign that they’re openly chatting on blogs about assassinating him and how they should prepare for the race war they're convinced his murder will trigger? The photo at the top of this blog is from the Georgia newspaper's cover story, White Fright. The image has sparked some controversy because, by illustrating that Obama may be in the crosshairs of white hate groups, it starkly presents the true nature of a small but vile part of America. It also highlights the undercurrent the Rude Pundit post explores. You can read that blog by clickinghere. It's about time the msm stop downplaying the rabid racism that continues to fester. Do we really need to pretend that racial hatred is dead and that Obama’s main problem is simply a matter of bridging the cultural divide?